By the afternoon, officials planned to cut the ribbon on a new-look Scholer Park, designed by the community and constructed by a small army of volunteers.

“They’re all over the place,” Mayor Paul J. Smith Jr. said.

In a town where the rhythms of hammers and drills have been a daily soundtrack for nearly 11 months, this construction was planned before superstorm Sandy hit.

“What we had here was old,” Smith said. “The hurricane didn’t help it.”

At least 200 volunteers from the town, United Way, United Healthcare, Mater Dei High School and the national nonprofit Kaboom helped piece the playground together Tuesday. While one group mixed cement, another drove nails into new wooden picnic tables. Some planted flowers and others dug post holes.

Community meetings leading up to the day’s construction determined the look of the new playground, down to the colors of the equipment (red, white and blue).

Kaboom organized the playground project, which was paid for by UnitedHealthcare, by a Monmouth County grant that Union Beach matched and by the United Way. Kaboom sought input from residents in the months leading up to Tuesday’s construction. It is the 2,348th playground the organization has built, and no two are the same, said Teresa Crippen, project manager.

They wanted a rock wall, so they got a rock wall. They wanted a zip line, and got one. They wanted three bays of swings and flower beds. They got those, too.

Within the skating rink of the park, the craftier of the volunteers took paintbrushes to small wooden squares that were planned for a mosaic. In bold blues, reds and yellows, they painted messages one might expect for a working-class community savaged by a brutal storm: Hope. Dream. Believe.

Lisa Reina, who lives in Brick, painted “Be Strong” in yellow paint outlined in royal blue.

“Where I live, it seems like there’s more progress in the rebuilding than this area,” she said. “There’s still so much not even demolished, instead of further along in the process of rebuilding.”